Small Changes Make a Big IMPACT!

Monthly Archives: March 2013

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I did really well yesterday on keeping it clean! Mondays & Wednesdays are my most difficult days to stay on track because they are brutally long and filled with excuses to screw up. The defining moment is between classes. I usually have 30-45 minutes between class. Not enough time to go home, or Subway, cafeteria is closed at this time of night, but vending machines are open and NOW ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS!! WHAT!! Yep, it’s true…you can charge $1.00 to your credit for a Snickers from the college campus vending machine, which is exactly what I did on Monday.

Still feeling empowered from Tuesday’s post, I wanted Wednesday (yesterday) to be successful. I prepared by grabbing a big ole’ bag of edamame at lunch and stuck it in the freezer at work. Right before I left for class, I snacked on edamame so I wouldn’t be starving after the first class. I also made sure to pack extra oranges and apples in my lunch so I wouldn’t run out if in a pinch. I took my peanut butter with me, my whole wheat tortillas, and a couple apples. I definitely packed too much for the ‘between class’ break. But I know that this is my weakest moment of the day, so I needed plenty of backups to avoid hitting up the vending machine. After my first class, I sat in my car and happily painted peanut butter on a tortilla while jamming out to some music just a little too loud. 🙂 Yum. Then I enjoyed a delicious apple and slapped on some PB every couple bites. I was feeling good and ready for class. Success! No vending machine temptation here. Phew.

The boyfriend’s mom gave him some seasoned chicken that he cooked this past weekend in the crock pot. It smells good, but looks really weird so we were steering clear of it. I decided to be brave and have some for lunch. I’m not sure what the seasoning was, but it was delicious! I reheated it on the stove with a little garlic and some extra virgin olive oil then set it aside. Sauteed onions, fresh green beans, and sweet bell peppers together then added the chicken once the veggies were nice and soft. It was really yummy and I’m planning to do the same thing for lunch today!

I almost got chips at Subway to satisfy my need for crunchy food. But then I remembered I had popcorn at home and I’d rather have that anyway! You can eat so much more for not as many calories, it’s wonderful! haha.

Today, I have edamame waiting for me in the freezer and had almonds for breakfast this morning. Now, I realize that almonds might not be quite enough of a breakfast. But, it’s a start. I usually don’t eat breakfast…so I’m starting where I can and I’ll build on that.

My eating is back on track…but my exercise is not so much. It’s really hard to work it in! Ugh. I didn’t go running last night like I had planned because I was really tired after teaching Kosama for 2 hours. So…I got Subway and went home to catch up on my DVR recordings before bed. haha. I won’t be able to run today either because I taught class at 5am & 6:10am, can’t go at lunch because then I’d be all sweaty…gross, and I have class from 5-9:30pm tonight. I’m tired just thinking about it!

All I see in that last paragraph are excuses, I know. I’m still struggling with balance between overcommitting to others and committing to myself. Small steps. Focusing on food now and then will add in the running committment slowly but surely. If it stays nice outside, maybe I’ll go on a walk for my afternoon break. That’d be super! 🙂

So yesterday…wasn’t my best day in this eating clean journey. I started out pretty strong…with a banana, handful of almonds, and a scoop of peanut butter. Had greek yogurt for my mid morning snack and lunch was tilapia from Sunday night with grapes. And that’s where the good news ends.

I went to the doctor yesterday morning because I’ve been having back problems for a while now. I have a pulled muscle in my back between the ribs and not allowed to do upper body weights or workouts for 3-4 weeks. Anything that makes it hurt…stop doing. Well that’s going to be difficult, because everything makes it hurt! It’s in the worst spot possible, mid back (thoracic) right where you would turn or breathe, or do anything besides sleep. Which – that is uncomfortable too. So, now I’m icing it and sleeping on my right side…which I don’t like! I’m a left side sleep…just am. haha.

Anyway, so that put me in a piss poor mood. I dealt with it via a little self-destuctive behavior. In the form of very unclean foods, a jalapeno cheddar hotdog and spicy nacho dorito chips, on my way to class last night. I’m so ashamed! Although..it did make me feel better. And that’s not all of it…I ate a snickers (yes, a snickers!) during my last class. Ugh. Considering the fact that I can’t really workout to my fullest ability right now, don’t you think I wouldn’t eat bad foods?! I guess we all get a little crazy in the moment.

Well, that little episode and the thought of having to post it, for all who read to see, has made me determined to nix the behavior before letting it swallow me. I’m going to focus on my running (that’s lower body!) and my leg workouts. I’ll be a little unbalanced…maybe, but at least I won’t be sitting around eating bon bons or snickers! 🙂 One good thing I did yesterday was sign-up for Dam-to-Dam! It’s a 20K on June 1, 2013….scary!! The longest race I’ve done was a 7K about a year ago..and it was hell! I usually stick to 5K distances. So, I joined a new running group out of Ankeny to help me stay consistent with training and I look forward to meeting on Saturdays for runs and doing fun runs with them this summer!!

Tonight I’ll be running 3.5 miles after work and focusing on being smart about food choices!

This last weekend was fairly successful. The boyfriend and I made a few new things, but not what we had planned to make! 🙂 He made some delicious chocolate, granola and blueberry cookies. Except I think we both ate too many! 🙂 Most of the meals this weekend consisted of adding vegetables to things already cooked earlier in the week. I had some ground beef that had been browned. We added vegetables to that one meal and then next meal put it in with some eggs and veggies. We finished leftover meatloaf and sweet potatoes and splurged on popcorn for movie night.

I did make some tilapia and sweet potato chips on Sunday night. They were simply devine!! It was super easy and quick to the make the tilapia – although I think I needed to cook it a little longer. The next day (Monday) when I reheated it for lunch, it actually tasted better than the night before!! I also worked on my food photography this weekend, so hopefully my picture quality will start improving!

We also experimented with juicing this weekend. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated. First we did a few shots of different items before combining. We tasted carrots, beets, and ginger – then mixed it together. It wasn’t bad! But we added a little bit too much ginger…but still not a bad drink. I had 2 or 3 more juice drinks over the weekend. The boyfriend juiced right before teaching fitness classes and said it gave him crazy good energy all the way through!

Make good choices! 🙂

Kristin

Juiced Carrot Shots!

Juiced Apple – it’s orange b/c we didn’t wash it out after the carrots. It was delicious! 🙂

Another positive day on the clean eating frontier. I didn’t have ANY, not one, mini chocolate chips yesterday. Wahoo! Progress! 🙂 Last night for dinner…we experimented with meatloaf. I say experimented because neither one of us had ever made meatloaf before. Sure, I’ve seen my mom makes it millions of times…but that was the extent of my involvement. Watching. The boyfriend and I headed to the store to get ingredients…but didn’t bring a recipe or look at one before we left. Not smart. Luckily, we live in the age of technology so I pulled up recipes on my phone. All of which included ingredients one or both of us don’t like/eat. I don’t like ketchup, the boyfriend doesn’t like mustard, and we’re not buying ‘onion soup’ or barbeque sauce. We are trying to eat clean here!! Duh!

So, we decided to have some fun with it and make our own version of clean’ish’ meatloaf! I don’t consider milk part of my clean eating because it has to be processed and I don’t like waste, so we used up some bread that had been in the freezer…so this meal was clean’ish’ because we used milk & bread. But MUCH healthier than any of the recipes that I could find. They all called for soy sauce, brown sugar, ketchup, and several other ingredients that are very high in either sugar or salt. No bueno. It was a lot of fun. We picked up some random vegetables plus using some that I had at home and threw it all in a bowl with some spices and thyme (if you look close at the ‘BEFORE’ picture…you can see a sprinkle of the thyme). We paired it with the rest of the french bread loaf and homemade salsa. Just splendid!

This morning I reeeeallly wanted Subway. Since I didn’t get it yesterday and today I remembered my purse, I felt I deserved it! 🙂 And then I was reminded (by the boyfriend) that I have already had cheat days this week with my mini chocolate chip fiasco! This is why it’s important to have an accountability partner, folks!! Especially when you are trying to change your behavior, people tend to get themselves either too much credit or not enough. It’s always a good idea to have someone backing you up and reminding you of your goals. Thanks boyfriend! 🙂 I grabbed my fruit (banana and apple) and headed out the door. Breakfast consisted of a banana with peanut butter and I plan to eat the apple this afternoon…however, I’ve run out of peanut butter. Sad. 😦 Lunch today was tuna & salsa on celery sticks. Delish.

This weekend we are experimenting more with sweet potatoes. I believe there’s a sweet potato hummus and something to do with oatmeal… Also we are making a ‘clean’ banana bread! I’m super excited about that one!! It’ll be delicious. I’ll be back on Monday with weekend updates and new recipes!! Have a spectacular day and weekend!

So yesterday was decent. Pretty comparable to Day 2. I did indulge in a couple handfuls of the mini semi-sweet chocolate chips I spoke about in the last post! Lunch yesterday was the tuna-salsa lettuce wrap from an earlier post. I didn’t take enough lettuce leafs (leaves?) with me to work yesteryday, so I finished my lunch with tuna-salsa celery sticks! Haha. I was going to use them for peanut butter, but it was actually really delicious!! 🙂 Again, I had apples and a banana as my snacks during the day and for dinner I had a scrumptious dinner consisting of Southwest Chicken and mashed sweet potatoes. The Southwest Chicken is SUPER easy. I used a southwest chipotle seasoning mix to coat the boneless skinless chicken breasts (from the butcher) and toss them in the crock pot. Fill it with just enough water to cover the top of the chicken breasts. I set the crock pot on Low for 12 hours. I often get told that I can cook it for less time than that – but I’m not taking any chances!! In order to make sure it doesn’t dry out when reheated over the next couple days, I store it in a plastic container with the liquid and heat it up with some of the cooking liquid drizzled over it. It makes it nice and moist and helps hold in the flavor!! Mmmmmm Delicious!

This morning I was going to go to Subway for breakfast…buuuuut I realized I left my purse at home. FAIL. So I had a banana and some peanut butter crackers. haha. Not exactly clean (the peanut butter crackers) but, better than not eating! For my midday snack I had the most delicious grapes! They were HUUUUGE!! I’ve never seen grapes so big. And with big grapes you get…BIG SEEDS! Blech. But they were totally worth it. Lunch was the same as dinner last night and I cheated and ate a mini Nestle Crunch bar. Just one though!! And then I headed to the kitchen and grabbed my peanut butter, an apple, and a banana before I lost control on the candy!!

Tonight we are making meatloaf (this should be interesting – I’ve never made it before!) and probably finishing off the mashed sweet potatoes. There were a lot more than intended because of the soupy conundrum. It’s gonna be delicious!

First the good: I did really well while I was at work. Didn’t touch the candy bowl. I stared it down a few times and just walked into my office where, thankfully, I had a banana and an orange sitting in plain site. I fought the candy dish with that banana and orange! I was so excited to go home and make a delicious dinner. And if you know me, that last sentence was extremely out of character! I’ve never been known to cook. After roughly 7 months of dating, I made the boyfriend some chocolate chip banana bread and his reaction? I’m happy to know you can cook!! If it took him 7 months to realize I can cook, it tells you that I don’t do it often. 🙂 Plus, I’m pretty sure my immediate family believes I eat frozen dinners every night, they are always so surprised when I say I’m cooking. And so am I. hahaha.

I knew that I had some boneless/skinless chicken breasts just begging to be spice and flavored into delirium. As soon as I got home, I grabbed all my newly purchase spices along with some old favorites. I was opening the garlic powder (not quite sure what’d I do with it yet, but I love garlic so it would be amazing either way) when I noticed a recipe for Garlic Lime Grilled Chicken on the spice jar. Yes, that’s right. I said Garlic LIME Grilled Chicken. Well, it’s winter…so I couldn’t grill, but I could bake it! And that’s exactly what I did. I used what I had in the spice cabinet and followed the recipe with a few off-book liberties. It was AMAZING! You can find the recipe by clicking here…it was fantastic. I’ve never baked chicken before but with a little help from the internet, I was a pro at it last night!! 🙂 Of course, I needed something to go with the chicken. It was lonely. Hmmm…glancing around the kitchen I take inventory of what’s on hand from shopping spree the other night. Sweet potatoes! I love sweet potatoes. Can you tell? I’ve never made mashed sweet potatoes before, but thought it’d be an excellent night for firsts! Again, with the help of instructions on the internet I began to embark on crafting delicious mashed sweet potatoes. The first round ended with a sweet potato soup. The picture below is the soup before I mixed in the second sweet potato. Half soup/half potatoes that are about to *hopefully* thicken it into legit mashed potatoes. I only intended to mash one sweet potato. 🙂 Success! The second potato was the perfect addition.

Now the bad: I was so hungry (what an excuse!) waiting for everything that when I opened the pantry to get honey for the potatoes…I spotted those darn mini semi-sweet chocolate chips. And then proceeded to eat a handful! By then time dinner was ready, eaten, and cleaned up I had about 6-7 handfuls of chocolate chips! AHH!! That was terrible. However, I’m still pretty stinkin’ proud of my dinner and super excited about my lunch that is waiting for me today. I’m eating left-overs from yesterday’s lunch…so that means a tuna & salsa lettuce wrap for me plus mashed sweet potatoes from last night! YAY!